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Asked by to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by .
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SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:
Hey dementia – I think I answered this one in chat for you, but here’s a bigger explanation!
Because everything in the universe is positioned relative to everything else, it can be hard to say where we should start our measuring from when we think of the expanding universe! To get round this, we talk about the expansion in terms of the distance between any two given galaxys (this is handy, because most of the calculations are based on looking at galaxies move with the hubble telescope).
Galaxies are very far away, and we measure the distance between them in parsecs. One parsec is equal to about 3.26 light years, or 19,200,000,000,000 miles (that’s 19.2 trillion btw). A megaparsec is 1000 parsecs (stick another 3 zeros on that number I just said).
Right now, the universe appears to be expanding at a rate of 71 kilometers per second per megaparsec. So for every megaparsec between 2 galaxies, the distance increases by 71 kilometers every second.
WOOSH!
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Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:
I guess this is hard to say!! But it looks like SJ gave an answer…
“or every megaparsec between 2 galaxies, the distance increases by 71 kilometers every second.”
WOW! Way faster than we can even conceive of…
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Comments
SJ commented on :
Han Solo was WRONG to say he did the Kessel run in 12 parsecs – parsec is for DISTANCE not TIME!!
Tut tut Solo. I expected better of you
SJ commented on :
@gem – thank you, kind lady!